2S4U DoD Characters
Really should rename this but I'm too lazy. Making Sense of Dawn of Defiance Is that really possible? It's a WotC campaign arc, written by multiple over the course of months, and despite the fact that the lead designer wrote 4 of the adventures, there are obvious rules holes like expecting people to make Perception tests without listing a DC. But I digress. Funding the Sarlaac Project So a key motivator of the first arc of DoD is that the Empire is building the Sarlaac project secretly, and paying for it through all kinds of underhanded means. Specifically (amongst other schemes), they're selling Nazren slaves to a Hutt in exchange for Tibani gas mined on Bespin, as well as paying the Hutt a bunch of money by losing it to one of his agents in a yearly sabbac tournament. Which brings up a bunch of questions: # Why doesn't the Emperor just order the Sabbac project built? He's the former Grand Chancellor with all kinds of wacky emergency powers, surely he can build all kinds of crazy stuff by fiat. # Since the Empire is in a continued business relationship with the Hutt, and knows where he lives (and can therefor annihilate that Hutt whenever the Hutt betrays them), why don't they just give him his money at his palace? # How does the money exchange at the Sabbac tournament even work? Imperial Agent wins much of the game, then deliberately loses it all to the Hutt Agent, who still needs to win the overall tournament, right? (It's winner takes all, for no obvious reason). If someone else shows up their and Mavericks out a Royal Flush on the final hand, does the Hutt Agent just say, "Ooops, sorry boss, we lost the pay-off, guess you're going to have to buy the cheap rancor feed this next year"? # Arrgggh! Some solutions, by question: # Since DoD is immediately after the Clone Wars, the Senate is still pretty powerful. They empowered Palpatine to stop the wars and such, not to fund multi-bajillion credit military boondoggles. Especially now that the Wars are mostly over. If Palpatine wants to build a Super Star Destroyer to threaten their planets with, the Senate is going to say no. ## So Imperial Navy needs some way to earn multi-bajillions over a couple of years, in ways that the Senate can't necessarily detect. One such scheme: ## As part of the continued campaign against Separatist Hold-Outs on Nizon, there's a significant military presence. ## Which spends most of its time catching Navren slaves on the cheap and diverting the funds. ## The slaves are put on captured slaver ships (which were supposed to been condemned) and then the ships are traded to the Hutt for Tibani gas. The gas can be sold (money for the Project) or used to power the 8-kajillion turboblasterlasers. ## The Hutt fences the slaves to various slave organizations, including the ships. The ships are later recaptured by the Imperial Navy (which gets prize money for them which is again diverted to the Project), supposed condemned and destroyed, but then sent to Nizon so the cycle can repeat. ## The Hutt also pays the Imperials in cold, hard cash, in addition to the tibani gas. This kinda sucks for the Hutt, but it beats having your luxury yacht turbo-lasered because of an "IFF failure, oops." # The slave-ship for tibani gas and credits trade-off happens at Bespin because neither side trusts each other for shit. They're both criminals, working on an installment plan is not an option. # Now that the order of things makes more sense, the gambling trick is more reasonable. ## The Hutt, as part of his loan-sharking business, stakes sabbac players for the monthly tournament. This lets him control the number of players (to some extent), reduce the randomness factor (if all 5 people sitting at the final table are his guys, he knows the Imperials will get their pay-off), and gives the Hutt a future income stream from his loan-shark victims. ## The Imperials send a working naval officer - who according to regs can't gamble while in uniform. So after winning the big pot in the tournament, he gets non-Judicial punishment, his money impounded (and diverted to the Project), and life goes on. ## The tournament can't be winner take all. Where's the house's cut? Something like 20% House, 45% First place, 25% second place, 10% third is good. As long as the Imperials take first or second, they're happy, and the Hutt can recoup some of his losses, so he seeds in a few good, reliable players. ## Obviously, this requires reversing the mannerisms from the module, with the IA being devil-may-care and the HA having the prissy hand gestures. Whatever. # More as I have more issues. ;Spaceships! 2S4U Luxury Yacht